


Methedhênlû

by Eilinelithil



Series: Lover's Leap [7]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, History, Middle Earth, Sorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26014960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: Rumplestiltskin is wisked away just as he is approaching the Dark Castle, and after a surprise visit from Jefferson, on a very strange day, Belle follows soon after. They find themselves in a world where darkness is approaching unless a sacrifice is made, and all because a king is unwilling to join the war; would much rather save his own, than become a hero and save the world.
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Nimrodel|Amroth
Series: Lover's Leap [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863370
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Methedhênlû

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the seventh AU-gust fic. The prompt was Childhood Friends

Encouraging a king to go to war was perhaps the furthest thing from his mind when Rumplestiltskin first felt the pull of Fairy magic drawing him away from the Dark Castle.

He and Belle had only just recovered from the awkwardness of the last three situations in which they had found themselves; only just gotten past blushing every time one spoke to the other, and for his part, Rumplestiltskin had only _just_ begun staying home again for any considerable length of time instead of hurrying out to far flung realms to make deals more and more perilous… as if he were testing himself.

Given this, he _cursed_ the Fairies - and one in particular - to the extent his considerable vocabulary would allow. The Enchanted forest around him began to dissolve, like ashes blowing away in a wind, even as he made his approach home.

* * *

For her part, Belle had been feeling strange since morning, and at first she thought little of it, simply that she had woken tired and because of that, time was dragging, time was slow. The first inkling she had that something about that assumption was so very wrong came around the noon hour, when she convinced herself that the tea cakes she had put in the oven to bake some little while ago - she thought - must by now be cooked, if not burned.

She hurried to the kitchen knowing, by some inexplicable feeling, that Rumplestiltskin was coming home that day, and would want the teacakes with his afternoon tea. She hurried in, expecting to see smoke billowing out of the oven, and grabbed the thick mitts that Rumple had made for her the first day she’d burned her fingers cooking his meal, threw open the oven door, and taken out the tray of tea cakes.

She was perplexed to find them still doughy, and barely risen at all.

The strange dislocation left her feeling almost ill, and she sat down _hard_ on one of the kitchen chairs, and began fanning herself with the dish towel that was tucked into the side of her apron, trying to banish the hot flush - and then the terrible chill that followed each other in close succession, even as the unexpected voice beside her broke the castle’s quiet.

“That’s _just_ how I feel,” he said, and after jumping so hard she almost fell _off_ said chair, Belle turned her head to see Rumplestiltskin’s friend, Jefferson, leaning back in one of the chairs so much that only two of its legs were in contact with the floor, while both of _his_ feet were up, crossed at the ankles, across the corner of the table.

“Jefferson!” she gasped when she found air enough in her lungs to do so.

“One and the same, dear lady,” he said and with a flourish removed his hat, rolled it down along his arm, only to catch it in his hand, and deposit it, like an over-sized teacup, on the tabletop beside his long legs.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, not unkindly, but it came out rather sharper than she intended.

“I was… ‘invited’.” He made air quotes around the word, and then added, “And I must say I find it terribly bad form to summon a fellow and then not be around to greet him.”

“Rumple sent for you?” she asked, rubbing a hand across her forehead.

“Oh, _Rumple_ now is it?” he teased. “And yes, he—” and then, as if seeing her for the first time since their conversation began, he frowned, took his feet off the table, thus letting the chair fall back to the stone floor with a thump and turned to face her. “Are you feeling all right? You look awfully pale.”

“No, I… I really don’t.”

Still frowning, he reached out to take hold of her hand. She felt as though his touch were scalding her, his hands were warm and hers so cold. Next, he reached out to lay the back of his hand against her forehead.

“You’re burning up,” he said. “Belle, what’s going on? Where is Rumplestiltskin?”

“I don’t—”

* * *

“…istan.”

“You do not know?” he responded, the question framed with confusion, rather than a simple question. Her declaration had come out of nowhere after all.

Nimrodel shook her head. “Forgive me,” she said, lowering her fair face and closing her eyes. “I think I am not quite myself.”

_Belle felt herself shiver inside. It was a strange sensation as the mind she rested with both accepted her presence and pushed her away at the same time, the same dislocation she had felt at the castle._

Amroth lifted her chin gently on the tips of his long fingers. “You have been so lost these past days. What is it, my beloved? What is wrong?”

She shook her head, refusing to look at him until he took her hands and squeezed them softly, then she smiled wryly, and sadly as he guessed.

“What have you seen?” he asked.

She sighed and walked away a few paces, following the bank of the river beside which they stood, as if distance would make her words less true, or the hurt less painful.

“What I have seen will cause one you love _great_ loss, terrible pain.” She sighed again, “Or else _all_ or Arda shall be lost.”

He came to her then, took her hands again and drew her closer, to face him, and then into his embrace.

“If the choice is between my friend and all the world, then… I must choose Arda over their pain,” he told her earnestly.

“You say that _now_ Amroth, but…”

“Who?” he asked.

“Oropherion,” she breathed.

* * *

They had been friends since childhood, had grown from boys, through adolescence to the young adults they now were, and never had the woodland closed in around him in the way it now did, even though the three of them sat apparently idle on the river bank with their feet cooling in the running crystal current. There was trouble ahead. He sensed it coming. He could feel it in the air.

_Rumplestiltskin mused as he watched from within. He had never before questioned the way the sight felt to him, a branching tree of many pathways along which he could send his mind to see the outcomes of the choices. Here it was not so much visual as feeling. Light and dark. It disturbed him_.

One of them would speak soon. They always did when such a heaviness had hung over them in the past, and there had been many. Like Nimrodel, he too could glimpse paths that would lead to peace or ruination. He did not relish the knowledge, especially at times like this.

He did not wish to put his friend in such a position as to make him the voice of reason in a bleak and comfortless outlook. He knew the fair maiden, also, suffered in what she knew. He could _feel_ her wrestling with her conscience as much as he wrestled with his loyalty. His father, King of the Woodland Realm, was a difficult man to love.

He could tell she knew what must be done and yet, like he, she did not want to bring it to pass. They deserved better.

“I know,” he said at last, drawing both their gazes his way, and they felt to silence again, but for the sounds of the leaves overhead hushing them, and the river current singing softly its promise of eternal comfort in the West.

“Mellon nín?”

It was Amroth finally broke that silence.

“I know what it is your beloved refuses to say; to insist of you,” he said, looking to them both and watching the taint of guilt color their auras, “Why do you refuse to speak?”

“Oropherion—” Nimrodel began, but he cut her off, suddenly unable to contain all that was to come and seeking catharsis so that he might do the right thing, he lashed out.

“Oh so _formal_ , my lady,” he spat with sarcasm, and saw the brush of pain that settled over her like a gown. “Could it be that you that you cannot bring yourself to compel the one you love to persuade me to kill the king.”

“I ask you to persuade him to war, nothing else,” she said, “and certainly not to _murder_ him.”

“It amounts to the same, Nimrodel, I _know_ you have seen it!” he implored, and he leaped to his feet, long strides bringing him closer to her, until Amroth, too, leaped up to stand in his way.

“No, my friend,” Amroth said, “I cannot allow it. She does not _make_ the future, only sees its strands and where they might lead.”

“To my father’s death, that is where!” he snapped.

“That is as maybe, but I _cannot_ ask Nimrodel to be the instrument of _your_ persuasion either. Heed her or heed her not, the choice is yours.”

Nimrodel eased Amroth aside, and came around him to stand face to face with Oropher’s son, although she had to raise her head to meet his eyes.

“You cannot know that, and no more do I.” She laid her hand on his chest and felt the rapid beat of his heart. “We must simply have him agree to war at the High King’s side. Sauron _must_ fall or there will never be peace in Arda, and what is left will be a wasteland.”

* * *

Belle knew the words were a lie the minute her host spoke them, and she looked between the two friends. Desperate to work out which was Rumple. Which would understand. She _had_ seen Oropher’s future, and if he _would_ go to war, it _would_ lead to his death, for he would agree to fight, but not to be commanded, and _there_ would be his downfall.

She looked again between the two friends that may as well have been brothers, except for accident of birth, so alike were their thoughts and their temperament. She had also seen that the son would not ask, and darkness had covered the world.

But how could she ask it of him. How could she even persuade the one she - as Nimrodel - loved to ask it of his best friend… especially now they were all so close.

“No,” she said despairing. “I cannot ask it of you, and nor can I insist that Amroth steer you that way.”

* * *

The words lingered on the edge of Rumple’s consiousness before he knew he had spoke them. Was _this_ the wrong they came to right. That the son would not make himself the cause of his father’s demise?

He looked between the childhood friend, and Amroth’s lover, and wondered, though only for a moment, in which one of them Belle’s consciousness lay, and what her kind heart would be making of all this.

He… he was used to the harshness of reality, and for all that she had given herself - supposedly - to his captivity in return for his help in defeating the ogres that would surely have killed all in their path, all of her people, this situation was by _far_ different.

“And if I do it of my own accord, what then?” he asked, watching their faces change to surprise, and then concern, and then something akin to horror. He was undeterred. “It is not as though I do not have Ereinion’s ear.”

“But he’s your _father!_ ”

_Ah, there she is_.

“And Ereinion is my king,” he argued. “To whom does my treason cause the most harm?” Then he turned, feeling surprisingly emotional in a sudden rush as he caught sight of the tears in Nimrodel’s eyes, before he added, “And what cost my silence?”

She came to him then, heedless of the presence of her lover at her back, and rested both her hands against him.

“There will be losses,” she murmured quietly, to only him, “and many of them unfair, but… we _will_ prevail. We _shall_ win the day.”

He drew himself up to his full and regal height, looking down on her as he answered, “Cold comfort, little maid.”

“I will come with you,” Amroth said from behind her. “We can speak to your father together.”

He nodded, but did not take his eyes from Nimrodel as she began to walk away, but after only a few steps, turned back as Amroth came to his side.

“Come back to me,” she said to Amroth, though her eyes never left _his_. Amroth bowed his head, his hand over his heart before opening out his arm, with his palm to the darkening sky.

Just as they were about to turn, to go to where he had left the horses, she spoke again, as if to call him back. The look of her and the tone in her voice was entirely foreign now and he guessed that whatever was to be done, had been done; that Belle was gone.

“Thranduil,” she said. “You will not mourn alone.”


End file.
